Has anyone really done less to be hated so much as Hillary Clinton? Not just mistrusted, or merely not someone’s cup of tea, I mean visceral hatred – from Democrats!  Now I preferred the set of policies propounded by Bernie Sanders, but these people make me look like a Hillary apologist when I am forced, out of fairness, to defend her against the collection of zombie lies and unfounded allegations that go back 30 years.

Had a conversation with a middle-aged male relative who is uber-liberal. He loves, loves, loves Obama, wishes he could vote for him again.  Wanted Bernie, but not just for the policies, this liberal Democrat who lived through the 90’s was eager to express just how much torture it would be to hold his nose and vote for Secretary Clinton.

Okay, why?

The first thing he cited was how she made $100,000 on a $1,000 investment. Which was one of those where there’s smoke there’s fire “controversies” that was trumped up and spread throughout the Whitewater/Newt Gingrich/Starr Investigation era. I thought we’d heard the last of that golden chestnut, but no.  This person was rational enough to know that the Clintons didn’t have Vince Foster murdered and didn’t really leave trail of bodies all over Arkansas, but just fucking barely.  Like all Clinton haters (although they’re usually Republicans) he had a story from a friend of a friend who knows a Secret Service person, who knows someone who can tell you what a slimebag Bill Clinton is and… wait for it… Hillary enables him. Boom!!

That none of those stories have ever been corroborated, despite the Clintons being the most heavily scrutinized people in world history except for maybe Princess Diana, does not deter them in the slightest from continuing to spread them.

The fact that nobody who actually knows Hillary Clinton has ever turned on her, she has friends that go back to elementary school, no intimate has ever turned on her and written a tell-all and everybody who’s ever worked with her has nice things to say about her, including Republicans, just elicited this response: “they’re scared.”

Scared of what?  You grant that they aren’t actually murderers like some on the delusional right believe.  So what are they scared of?  It’s just an inability to grant that they’re humans.

Now I wanted to talk about policies I disagreed with, but he couldn’t be less interested. Policy disagreements, sure. But these are horrible people, you must understand that!

Well I’m sorry.  What I saw in the 90s was the indefatigable persecution, for political purposes, of a President and a First Lady (and yes the First Daughter was attacked as well).

Nothing either of the Clintons have ever been accused of, that could be corroborated, rises above the level of common political manipulation and poor judgment. Hiring contributors?  Pardoning contributors?  Some unforced errors there. Even lying about sex. It was stupid, but not the massive crime wave or malfeasance the right wing noise machine kept claiming was around every corner.  Truthfully, the actual conspiracy among anti-Clinton forces always undercut the alleged Clinton conspiracies with their hyperbolic screaming about much worse offenses.

In the 21st century we have Benghazi and private e-mail servers as stand-ins for actual policy disagreements. The politics of personal destruction that Newt Gingrich made an art form is more popular than ever despite it’s diminishing returns.  How did that work out for old Newtie?

There is no unblemished 30 year career in public service. Period. But there’s still 30 years of public service!

What I see is 30 years of smoke and no fire, and sometimes not even real smoke, often just imagined smoke from people who have an axe to grind saying they smell smoke when there’s none.

Only the Clintons could be investigated for a real estate deal in which they lost money. And the fact that they’re so particularly and venomously hated, as a cottage industry, is pointed to as part of that smoke that must indicate fire somewhere.

It takes a more conspiratorial mind than mine to keep sniffing the air and smelling smoke when that house should have burned down 10 times over already.

Maybe the fire is just “scared.”

Again, not defending co-opting disastrous Republican policies and claiming victory that made for a disappointing presidency, as far as I’m concerned. And not defending coziness to Wall Street and a congenital need to court approval from the elite while claiming progressive bonafides.  Just get tired of conspiracy thinking and cynicism.